Healthy Chicken

Last Friday, my younger children and I had the opportunity to help a Christian family process 49 chickens. I will tell how we turned healthy young chickens into a meal waiting to be cooked. My 13 year old son and his friend caught the birds and placed them upside down in a large funnel. The chickens head came out the bottom of the funnel and my son slit the artery on both sides of the neck. They let the blood drain out and then dunked them in very hot water for a minute or so to loosen the feathers. The chicken went next to the plucking table where my 15 year old daughter and some friends plucked the feathers. Next, the chickens came to my table where we had half a dozen people gutting the chickens and doing finishing touches. We first cut out an oil gland from the tail and a sack from the neck. Then we removed the feet and neck. Next we loosened the inside organs from the cavity and carefully pulled them out without puncturing anything. It was fun to see the anatomy of the birds. We separated the heart, giblet and liver to save and discarded the rest of the insides. We cut the gizzards open, cleaned it out and pulled off the very yellow lining. The gizzards are sandy and gritty. Going back to the chicken, we scraped the lungs out of the cavity and washed it very well. Next the chickens went to a table for packing. We had 3 families with lots of children helping. It was a lot of fun.

I learned that the chickens that we buy at the store are electrically shocked to kill them. This causes the blood to coagulate in the muscles and make the meat undesirable. The Biblical was of killing a creature for eating is to slash their arteries and drain the blood out. They are dipped 6-8 times in a bleach solution before packaging leaving toxic chlorine in them. They are raised in crowded conditions and do not get the exercise they need to be healthy. Just like us, they need to oxygenate their lungs and bodies. They are fed grains and animal byproducts. It is always better to eat vegetarian fed chickens. Any of you remember the avian flu that swept through Asia a few years ago? I trust that our Designer and Creator knew what He was doing when He gave us the instructions on eating. I am not always going to be able to purchase these wonderful birds, but if you can find them they are a very nutritious was to have chicken. We grilled one of the chickens fresh. It was such a treat for our family to have a fresh, well cleaned chicken that we saw running around the day before and was processed by us. Oh we would love to live on a farm!